Chilean riot police crack down on student protests over education funding
Chilean riot police crack down on student protests over education funding
08/04
SANTIAGO, Chile - Riot police battled high school and university students in the streets of Chile’s capital on Thursday, firing water cannons and tear gas and using officers on horseback to break up flaming barricades.
Interior Minister Rodrigo Hinzpeter and other Chilean authorities had warned that Thursday’s marches were considered illegal and would be met with force.
The students, who have been on strike for weeks to press for major changes in Chile’s underfunded and unequal public education system, insisted on marching anyway, setting up barricades at a dozen points around the city and paralyzing traffic. While many tried to peacefully hold their ground, some hooded demonstrators threw rocks at police cars and passing buses.
Students, teachers and other education workers have participated in huge street demonstrations in recent weeks, with as many as 100,000 people joining their call for more government funding and a fundamental change in a system set up under the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet that largely left public schools at the mercy of underfunded municipalities.
President Sebastian Pinera offered a 21-point package of reforms and invited center-left lawmakers to sit down with him in the presidential palace in hopes of resolving the strikes that have put classes on hold around Chile for more than two months. His plan would increase funding in general and partially shift education responsibilities to Chile’s heavily centralized national government.
Read more at source
08/04
SANTIAGO, Chile - Riot police battled high school and university students in the streets of Chile’s capital on Thursday, firing water cannons and tear gas and using officers on horseback to break up flaming barricades.
Interior Minister Rodrigo Hinzpeter and other Chilean authorities had warned that Thursday’s marches were considered illegal and would be met with force.
The students, who have been on strike for weeks to press for major changes in Chile’s underfunded and unequal public education system, insisted on marching anyway, setting up barricades at a dozen points around the city and paralyzing traffic. While many tried to peacefully hold their ground, some hooded demonstrators threw rocks at police cars and passing buses.
Students, teachers and other education workers have participated in huge street demonstrations in recent weeks, with as many as 100,000 people joining their call for more government funding and a fundamental change in a system set up under the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet that largely left public schools at the mercy of underfunded municipalities.
President Sebastian Pinera offered a 21-point package of reforms and invited center-left lawmakers to sit down with him in the presidential palace in hopes of resolving the strikes that have put classes on hold around Chile for more than two months. His plan would increase funding in general and partially shift education responsibilities to Chile’s heavily centralized national government.
Read more at source